Col. C. H. Ray
Col. C. H. Ray, merchant and Postmaster, Mantua, is a native of Mantua, Portage Co., Ohio, born October 31, 1835, and now owns the farm on which he was born and reared. His grandfather served in the Revolutionary Army, his father in the war of 1812, in a Mantua company, and himself, with five brothers, served in the Union Army in the war of the Rebellion. He attended school at Hiram in the early days of that very excellent and popular school at that place, and at the time Rev. Sutton Hayden was President of the institute, and James A. Garfield a student and teacher of classes. Our subject worked on his father's farm in summer and taught a district school in winter. From first to last Mr. Ray was an enemy of the slave power, and when Kansas commenced her struggle for freedom his attention was attracted in that direction, and in 1856, while yet a boy, with an older brother, he drove a team of horses attached to a covered wagon from Wisconsin to Kansas, a distance of nearly 1,000 miles, camping out and sleeping in the wagon nights during the whole journey, a trip he enjoyed very much. He remained in Kansas for two years clerking in a store for an elder brother and working in a mill. Here he voted against the Pro-slavery Constitution and its propositions, and for a Free State Constitution for Kansas. While here he was honored with an introduction to John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, who frequently called at his brother's house during those troublesome times, and whom he has ever regarded as a man of very high character, and a man of pure principles, a prophet born before his day, and in 1883 wrote a lengthy article for the National Tribune, Washington, D. C, on John Brown's work in Kansas, that was well received by the public and read with much interest. He returned to Ohio in the spring of 1859, worked on the farm at home and taught a winter term of school in his home district where he had learned his A B C's. He enlisted in the army in the early part of the summer of 1862, being the fifth one of a family of six boys to join the Union Army. On the fourth day of July, 1863, Mr. Ray was elected Captain of a Mantua company of Ohio militia and commissioned as such by His Excellency, David Tod, Ohio's great war Governor, and on the 22d day of September of the same year he was elected and commissioned Colonel of the First Regiment Ohio Militia in Portage County. At the close of the civil war he engaged in the milling business for a few years, and in 1867 engaged in mercantile business, which pursuit, together with farming, he is now in, having carried on the mercantile business in Mantua and in the same building for more than eighteen years. He is now and has been Postmaster at Mantua for the past eighteen years, having received his appointment under Andrew Johnson's administration. Col. Ray was married, on the 22d day of June, 1868, to Miss Martha A. Cochran, daughter of the Hon. Leverett Cochran, who represented Portage County in the Ohio Legislature in 1854 and 1855. Our subject has always taken an active part in politics, being a stanch and uncompromising Republican, and upon Gen. J. A. Garfield receiving the nomination for President in 1880, he at once took the stump for his old teacher and neighbor and labored hard for the Republican cause in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and was rewarded for his labor by seeing his old friend seated in the Presidential chair. Born to labor and inured to toil, Col. Ray has led an active and industrious life, and by strict economy and close attention to business has accumulated a handsome competency, but has at no time allowed his business to occupy his whole time and attention, but has traveled quite extensively in this country, and seconded by a good wife, tries to enjoy life by getting the most out of it as it comes along. During the summer of 1884 Col. and Mrs. Ray crossed the continent, traveling quite extensively in the great West, and visited the Pacific Coast and the wonderful :Yellowstone National Park." He wrote up the country and their tour for a home paper, and on their return the Colonel took the lecture platform, where he has delivered his lecture entitled " The National Park." Col. Ray is one of the charter members of Mantua Lodge, No. 533, F. & A. M., also a charter member of Richardson Council, No. 63, R. & S. M., Cryptic Masonry, Ravenna, Ohio, and a charter member of Bentley Post, No. 294, G. A. R., of Mantua.
From History of Portage County, Ohio, Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885